SKF NOTE: I came across this amazing drummer in an online news story about a Kickstarter campaign to fund a “Hidden Drummers of Iran” documentary. Ruairi Glasheen, the author of the news story, is also the “Hidden Drummers” documentarian. This one-minute Instagram video leaves me wanting to hear more from this drummer and her colleagues.
As of this writing, Mr. Glasheen has raised $2,325 toward his Kickstarter goal of $5,916.
=====
Rhythm revolution: Young Iranians revive ancient drumming traditions
By Ruairi Glasheen, for CNN Updated 8:18 AM ET, Tue September 18, 2018
CNN)I first encountered the tonbak — Iran’s indigenous drum — as a student, when I heard it on an old LP I found in a dusty corner of the library at London’s Royal College of Music. Instantly, I was hooked.
A small, goblet-shaped drum, the tonbak…drives the fast and frenetic rhythmic intensity of Persian classical music.
The tonbak is usually made of walnut, ash or pear wood…with a thin piece of camel or goat skin.
Beyond formal drumming techniques, tonbak players have — over the instrument’s long history — devised a seemingly limitless range of deviations using different parts of the hands, fingers and nails to create entrancing solos and accompaniments. The modern generation’s top players have taken innovation a step further, incorporating elements of melody….
Today, Iran’s tonbak drumming scene is thriving.
[M]astering the tonbak is a long process that requires finding a teacher willing to take you under their wing, prayer and a lot of practice.
Piscataquis Observer September 14, 2018 by Scott K Fish
Songwriting with soldiers?
Earlier this week I was looking over Amazon’s digital album deals. It’s a habit of mine. Results are generally feast or famine. Either Amazon has little or no album deals of interest or Amazon has many album deals of interest. September started as a famine month. Nothing much in my three preferred album categories: jazz, country, classical.
But over in the $5.99 and less country albums a thumbnail picture of a black-and-white album cover grabbed my attention. It was Texas singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now” album. I’d never heard of Mary Gauthier, and I’m pretty sure she has never heard of me. But I listened online to a few minutes of her songs, “Falling Out of Love” and “Mercy Now.”
Gauthier — mercifully — is not pop country. Her singing reminded me at first of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, but Mary Gauthier has her own style, and I liked her melodies and her words enough to buy her “Mercy Now” album.
Wanting to know more about this Texas singer-songwriter, wondering why she and I never crossed paths, I visited her website marygauthier.com. Right there on her landing page is an advertisement for Mary’s newest album, “Rifles and Rosary Beads.” That album title caught my attention. I clicked a button to learn more, and I was taken to a new page with Mary’s three minute and forty second YouTube video explanation of “Rifles and Rosary Beads.”
“For me, art is to tell truths that are hard to tell. Songs are incredibly powerful vehicles to get you into another person’s heart,” Mary says as her video begins. She tells of her invitation from another Texas songwriter, Darden Smith, to “come be a part of a [military] veterans retreat.” Fifteen veterans and four songwriters working for two-and-a-half days at a retreat center.
On what were those eighteen people and Mary working? They were writing songs. “And we emerge with a song from everyone’s experience,” Mary says.
“I think that every service member, every veteran deserves to have this chance,” says an unidentified veteran who worked with Mary, telling her “things that no one on this planet knows.” The veteran’s military experience, in his own words, becomes a song.” From what I gather, the final product, the combination of lyrics, chords, rhythm, and melody, have to meet the veteran’s approval.
What’s important about the work Songwriting With Soldiers does, Mary explains, it “gets the stories from the people who served, and puts ‘em in a way that everyone can understand, and serves them back, so that we can see what these men and women have sacrificed and what their service means. We can see it. We understand it now,” Mary said.
Darden Smith — another Texas songwriter new to me — shares on his TedX video the path he traveled to starting Songwriting With Soldiers. Mr. Smith tells his audience a story that begins with a gig where Smith is in a cafeteria of a U.S. military hospital in Germany playing for audience of “sixty guys who’d just come out of Iraq.” None of them are listening to Smith. And as he’s getting ready to pack up, Smith has concluded that he and these sixty guys “have nothing in common.”
Then an exchange with one U.S. Marine about guitars sparks a song idea in Darden Smith. The idea carries him on an amazing discovery journey, realizing we all have things in common and we are all connected in this life. Songwriting With Soldiers “uses songwriting as a catalyst for positive change. We offer our participants a unique way to tell their stories, rebuild trust, release pain, and forge new bonds.”
The group has held 35 events. Hopefully Songwriting With Soldiers can connect with military veterans in Maine.
SKF NOTE: Willie Nelson, one of my favorite musicians, released his new album today, a tribute to Frank Sinatra titled, “My Way.”
Last night, prior to today’s album release, I listened to Willie sing “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road) from his new album. What a classic tune. Music by Harold Arlen, words by the one-and-only Johnny Mercer. Boy, could Mercer write lyrics. He was a good songwriter too.
In the very early 1970s I first heard the song “One for My Baby” on Frank Sinatra’s “Live at the Sands” album and loved everything about it. Soon I was singing the song, brushes in hand, sitting behind my Gretsch drumset at The Steamboat Lounge, Nicky’s Tavern, and almost every other place I played.
Willie gets my two thumbs up for his rendition of “One for My Baby.” Yes, his 85-year old voice is weaker, scratchy, and can’t hit all the notes he once hit. But to my ears, Willie’s voice — heck, his entire 85-year old musicianship — adds to the song much more than it detracts.
I bought my copy of Willie’s “My Way” and look forward to listening to it. By the way, whatever happened to the “Gentleman’s Code“?
nytimes.com
Ellie Mannette, Father of the Modern Steel Drum, Dies at 90
By Karen Zraick — Aug. 31, 2018
As a child in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s capital, Mr. Mannette became fascinated with…bands…using trash cans and buckets as drums…to create different sounds. [H]e sought to elevate and expand the craft of steel-pan music, and to share it with the world.
He became a master tuner, builder and teacher. …Mannette Instruments in Morgantown, is a major supplier of the instruments in the United States, and he trained students in tuning at West Virginia University for nearly 20 years.
Mannette was among the first to fashion a [chromatic scale] steel drum [to] play any melody in any key.
Today the steel drum is the national instrument of Trinidad and Tobago.
SKF NOTE: In the early 1970s Joe LaBarbera was recording and performing with Chuck Mangione. The group released three excellent albums with Mr. LaBarbera: Land of Make Believe (Mercury, 1973), Bellavia (A&M, 1975), and Chase the Clouds Away (A&M, 1975).
LaBarbera played a Gretsch kit with his drums and cymbals positioned at odd angles — which you can see in the accompanying Gretsch magazine ad.
In this excerpt LaBarbera talks about his Gretsch set-up with Mangione. I actually saw him play this Gretsch set in concert with Mangione at a Long Island, NY club called My Father’s Place. LaBarbera played great. It would seem drums/cymbals at these angles would make playing more difficult. But, as Joe says in this excerpt, he used this configuration for about five years.
I came across this exchange on the start of one of my Joe Englsh interview tapes. The tape was no doubt available when I needed to record LaBarbera’s answers.
Scott K Fish 
You must be logged in to post a comment.